


Return To Me

by tielan



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, F/M, Friendship, Major Bodily Injury, Unrequited, vigil - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-26
Updated: 2016-05-26
Packaged: 2018-07-10 10:18:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6980038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four days is an eternity between ransom message and rescue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Return To Me

**Author's Note:**

> A tumblr anon gave me the pairing "Captain Hill" and the prompt "come back": _Send me a "Come back" and I'll write a drabble about character asking the other to return (they parted after a fight, the other has been missing for a while, etc)_

Steve steps into the observation area for the cradle and finds Helen watching her patient.

“How is she?”

“Six broken ribs, a punctured lung, dislocated shoulder. Internal bleeding, major organ damage. A skull fracture with brain swelling. Significant soft-tissue trauma.” She doesn’t look away from Maria. “Tell me they’re dead.”

The polite, brisk request nearly floors him, but at least Steve can answer, “Yes.”

“Good.” And with that, Helen dances her fingers across the console. “We’re repairing the injuries. It’ll take nearly forty-eight hours to do so, even in the cradle, but she’ll survive. Whether she wants to, and how much of her is still sane afterwards...” Her expression is bleak and compassionate both. A doctor knows sometimes that life is not a kindness.

“Can I go in?”

“It’s not a hospital bedside, Captain.” The flash of amusement is brief. “Yes, you can. But you won’t see anything from outside the cradle.”

He doesn’t need to. He just needs to be close. The others are working out their grief and rage as they see fit. Steve doesn’t dare let his out – he’s not sure there’ll be anything left standing if he does.

Four days is an eternity between ransom message and rescue.

Especially when she gave them the order not to try.

_She just sent us every message a S.H.I.E.L.D agent is ever taught to shut down a situation that’s bleeding from an arterial wound and which needs to be terminated ASAP. Man down. Mission crash and burn. No rescue._ Barton’s voice had cracked at the edges.  _The only thing she hasn’t asked for is mercy._

Because from the cold end of a videocamera, there was no way for the viewers to grant her mercy – except to come for her, which she’d already nixed.

_Why wasn’t I ever told of this code?_

Natasha answered for them both.  _Because Fury recognised you’d never have obeyed it anyway._

“You had to know,” Steve tells the cradle in the silence of the sealed room. “I got Bucky out of the clutches of the CIA, Maria. I wasn’t going to just leave you there to die. And you could have let us know where you were, how to find you, instead of just telling us you were sacrificing yourself—”

The figure lying in the gel, silent and still beneath the frosted glass doesn’t respond when his voice gives out, doesn’t tell him that he’s not the only one capable of self-sacrifice, doesn’t chastise him for risking himself and the rest of the Avengers on a rescue mission that gained them only one, broken woman – and not even a hero at that.

“I guess you didn’t think you were important to the world. But you’re important to us.” He thinks of Helen’s request, _Tell me they’re dead_. He sinks his head into his hands. “You’re important to me,” he murmurs, confession to a priest who’ll never absolve him. “And you never wanted that, and I didn’t either. But there it is.”

Steve takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly as he looks at the woman whose body heals, cell by cell in the cradle. Who matters more than she should, more than he realised, more than she would ever have imagined. “Come back, Maria. Wherever you are, come back to us.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel is now posted: [When The West Wind Moves](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7211183) and is unabashed fluff.


End file.
